The Georges and the Jewels by Jane Smiley Book One of the Horses of Oak Valley Ranch

Jane Smiley makes her debut for young readers in this stirring novel set on a California horse ranch in the 1960s. Seventh-grader Abby Lovitt has always been more at ease with horses than with people. Her father insists they call all the mares “Jewel” and all the geldings “George” and warns Abby not to get attached: the horses are there to be sold. But with all the stress at school (the Big Four have turned against Abby and her friends) and home (her brother Danny is gone—for good, it seems—and now Daddy won’t speak his name), Abby seeks refuge with the Georges and the Jewels. But there’s one gelding on her family’s farm that gives her no end of trouble: the horse who won’t meet her gaze, the horse who bucks her right off every chance he gets, the horse her father makes her ride and train, every day. She calls him the Ornery George.

JANE SMILEY is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Thousand Acres and more than ten other works of fiction, as well as three works of nonfiction, including a critically acclaimed biography of Charles Dickens. In 2001 she was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She lives in northern California.

Kidz World

In order to prevent either himself or his daughter from getting too attached to any of the horses, Abby’s dad insists on naming every female horse that comes to the ranch “Jewel” and every male horse that comes to the ranch “George.”.

A Patchwork of Books

Gr 5–8—This first book in Smiley's "Horses of Oak Valley Ranch" series introduces listeners to Abby Lovitt and her family, who earn their living training and reselling horses. Daddy names all the mares Jewel, and the geldings George. That way, nobody gets too attached, because none of them are th...